Yesterday I posted a story. I joined the {W}rite of Passage group, to which I feel woefully inadequate. And my story yesterday? Frustrated me. It felt empty and hollow. I’m pretty good at jabbering on about my life and my feelings, but making up a story…not really my forte.
It’s not that I don’t have an active imagination. I do. A strange, wild, crazy place inside my head. And there are times that I broadcast my thoughts, but there are other times that I struggle. Struggle to share what I’m thinking. Struggle to get the words out the way I want them to come out. Struggle to explain what I really mean.
That strange, wild, crazy place in my head? It’s usually full of crazy and rather morbid thoughts. For example, let’s say that I’m chatting with someone online. We’re knee-deep in conversation, and all of a sudden they just aren’t responding. What’s your first thought when that happens? Maybe the phone rang. Or they had to go the bathroom. Or a child started screaming “I need help wiiiiiping”. Or they knocked over a half-empty diet coke can. Any of these are common, natural occurrences (at least at my house). I should expect it to be something like that. But no, not me. I immediately think, “OMG! someone broke into the house and has them at gun point.” and heaven forbid the next sentence they type be even remotely out of the ordinary. You know, something really cryptic like “had to let the dog out to pee and then got stopped by my neighbor”. Does she really mean that she “had to let the dog out to pee and then got stopped by the neighbor” or is that code for “OMG! Someone broke into my house and has me at gun point and I need you to call the police!”?
See, I’m crazy. And definitely not lacking in the imagination department.
But for some reason, people don’t want to know about that kind of crazy. People don’t want to know that you hear a weird noise and look at the clock so that when the police knock on your door, asking if you heard something, you can not only tell them yes, but the exact time the incident occurred. Or what about when I memorize random licence plate numbers just because the car looks suspicious to me. Or…well, there’s no point in airing out all my crazy.
So that’s my brand of crazy. What’s yours?
**Hopefully I’ll do much better with next week’s challenge: The Lunch Box essay.**
Your brand of crazy and my brand of crazy are the same.
FYI ppl, she’s NOT kidding about this (but we love her anyway)
I always feel when I’m on the line to write something specific, I freeze. Now if I just have to write the words that are built up in my head then they flow(most of the time) better.
Your police story makes me giggle because Kate has one of those same stories about her Mom going into the bank and taking a while she thought the place was being held up.
yeah. exactly why i’m not doing the {w}rite of passage thing. i need to write what i need to write. kwim?
and i remember laughing like a nut the first time you told me that bit about your morbid thoughts when i’m slow responding on chat. still funny. and i still adore you. you and all your crazies.
Wow, I thought *I* was strange. Because I totally do the clock and the license plate thing too! Wow. Glad to know I’m not the only crazy one out there!
I used to LOVE creative writing & could come up with a backstory for just about anything. I was a theatre major for crying out loud…I’d better have been good at it. But I am definitely not a command performer anymore nor do I want to be. I like to write about what’s important to me and that’s about it. And I’m right there with ya on the license plate. I also tend to make a mental note of suspicious people’s stats – height, weight, stature, color of clothing, etc. My kind of crazy though is remembering the most random things in vivid detail & then somehow losing alot of the big stuff. For instance, I can say all of the prepositions in alphabetical order in less than 20 seconds – probably more like 15; but I’m always scared to “say” 15 in case I slip up. Why? Who knows! I learned them in 4th grade and haven’t needed them since then, but I just can’t let them go – or all of the pronouns in case order either. Do I remember anything about my college graduation (other than the fact that I hugged the president of the college instead of shaking her hand)? Nope.
Hmmm friend? I don’t think that is so crazy. Maybe since I do the same thing. Am totally not joking.
B? It’s snowing on your blog. How in the world can it snow on your blog when it is 71 freaking degrees where you live? (Your husband oh so nicely tweeted that to me this morning.)